Chapter 8: In a Skye Bothy

A Summer in Skye by Alexander Smith

I am quite alone here. England may have been invaded and London
sacked, for aught I know. Several weeks since a newspaper, accidentally blown
to my solitude, informed me that the Great Eastern, with the second American
telegraphic cable on board, had got under way, and was about to proceed to sea.
There is great joy, I perceive. Human nature stands astonished at itself -
felicitates itself on its remarkable talent, and will for months to come
complacently purr over its achievement in magazines and reviews. A fine world,
messieurs, that will attain to heaven - if in the power of steam. A very fine
world; yet for all that, I have withdrawn from it for a time, and would rather
not hear of its remarkable exploits. In my present mood, I do not value them
the coil of vapour on the brow of Blaavin, which, as I gaze, smoulders into
nothing in the fire of sunrise.

Goethe informs us that in his youth he loved to shelter himself in
the Scripture narratives from the marching and counter-marching of armies, the
cannonading, fighting, and retreating, that went on everywhere around him. He
shut his eyes, as it were, and a whole war-convulsed Europe wheeled away into
silence and distance; and in its place, lo! the patriarchs, with their tawny
tents, their man- servants and maid-servants, and countless flocks in
perceptible procession whitening the Syrian plains. In this, my green solitude,
I appreciate the full sweetness of the passage. Everything here is silent as
the Bible plains themselves. I am cut off from former scenes and associates as
by the sullen Styx and the grim ferrying of Charon's boat.

The noise of the world does not touch me. I live too far inland to
hear the thunder of the reef. To this place no postman comes; no tax-gatherer.
This region never heard the sound of the churchgoing bell. The land is Pagan as
when the yellow-haired Norseman landed a thousand years ago. I almost feel a
Pagan myself. Not using a notched stick, I have lost all count of time, and
don't know Saturday from Sunday. Civilisation is like a soldier's stock, it
makes you carry your head a good deal higher, makes the angels weep a little
more at your fantastic tricks, and half suffocates you the while. I have thrown
it away, and breathe freely. My bed is the heather, my mirror the stream from
the hills, my comb and brush the sea breeze, my watch the sun, my theatre the
sunset, and my evening service - not without a rude natural
religion in it - watching
the pinnacles of the hills of Cuchullin sharpening in intense purple against
the pallid orange of the sky, or listening to the melancholy voices of the
sea-birds and the tide; that over, I am asleep, till touched by the earliest
splendour of the dawn. I am, not without reason, hugely enamoured of my
vagabond existence.

My bothy is situated on the shores of one of the Lochs that
intersect Skye. The coast is bare and
rocky, hollowed into fantastic chambers; and when the tide is making, every
cavern murmurs like a sea-shell. The land, from frequent rain, green as
emerald, rises into soft pastoral heights, and about a mile inland soars
suddenly up into peaks of bastard marble, white as the cloud under which the
lark sings at noon, and bathed in rosy light at sunset. In front are the
Cuchullin hills and the monstrous peak of Blaavin; then the green strath runs
narrowing out to sea, and the Island of Rum, with a white cloud upon it, stretches
like a gigantic shadow across the entrance of the loch, and completes the
scene. Twice every twenty-four hours the Atlantic tide sets in upon the
hollowed shores; twice is the sea withdrawn, leaving spaces of smooth sand on
which mermaids, with golden combs, might sleek alluring tresses; and black
rocks, heaped with brown dulse and tangle, and lovely ocean blooms of purple
and orange; and bare islets - marked at full of tide by a glimmer of pale green
amid the universal sparkle - where most the sea-fowl love to congregate.

To these islets, on favourable evenings, come the crows, and sit in
sable parliament; business despatched, they start into air as at a gun, and
stream away through the sunset to their roosting-place in the
Armadale woods. The shore supplies
for me the place of books and companions. Of course Blaavin and the Cuchullin
hills are the chief attractions, and I never weary watching them. In the
morning they wear a great white caftan of mist; but that lifts away before
noon, and they stand with all their scars and passionate torrent-lines bare to
the blue heavens, with perhaps a solitary shoulder for a moment gleaming wet to
the sunlight. After a while a vapour begins to steam up from their abysses,
gathering itself into strange shapes, knotting and twisting itself like smoke;
while above, the terrible crests are now lost, now revealed, in a stream of
flying rack. In an hour a wall of rain, gray as granite, opaque as iron to the
eye, stands up from sea to heaven. The loch is roughening before the wind, and
the islets, black dots a second ago, are patches of roaring foam. You hear
fierce sound of its coming. Anon, the lashing tempest sweeps over you, and
looking behind, up the long inland glen, you can see the birch-woods and over
the sides of the hills, driven on the wind, the white smoke of the rain. Though
fierce as a charge of Highland bayonets these squalls are seldom of long
duration, and you bless them when you creep from your shelter, for out comes
the sun, and the birch-woods are twinkling, and more intensely flash the levels
of the sea, and at a stroke the clouds are scattered from the wet brow of
Blaavin, and to the whole a new element has been added; the voice of the
swollen stream as it rushes red over a hundred tiny cataracts, and roars
river-broad into the sea, making turbid the azure. Then I have my amusements in
this solitary place. The mountains are of course open, and this morning, at
dawn, a roe swept past me like the wind, with its nose to the dewy ground - "
tracking," they call it here. Above all, I can wander on the ebbed beach. Hogg
speaks of that

"Undefined and mingled hum,Voice of
the desert, never dumb."

But far more than the murmuring and insecty air of the moorland
does the wet chirk-chirking of the living shore give one the idea of crowded
and multitudinous life. Did the reader ever hunt razor-fish? - not sport like
tiger-hunting, I admit; yet it has its pleasures and excitements, and can kill
a forenoon for an idle man agreeably. On the wet sands yonder the razor-fish
are spouting like the fountains at Versailles on a féte day. The shy
fellow sinks on discharging his watery feu de joie. If you are quickly after
him through the sand, you catch him, and then comes the tug of war. Address and
dexterity are required. If you pull vigorously, he slips out of his sheath a
"mother-naked" mollusc, and escapes. If you do your spiriting gently, you drag
him up to light, a long thin case, with a white fishy bulb protruding at one
end like a root. Rinse him in sea water, toss him into your basket, and plunge
after another watery flash.

These razor-fish are excellent eating, the people say, and when
used as bait no fish that swims the ocean stream - cod, whiting, haddock, flat
skate, broad-shouldered crimson bream - no, not the detested dog-fish himself,
this summer swarming in every Loch and becursed by every fisherman - can keep
himself off the hook, and in an hour your boat is laden with glittering spoil.
Then, if you take your gun to the low islands - and you can go dry-shod at ebb
of tide - you have your chance of sea-fowl. Gulls of all kinds are there,
dookers and divers of every description, flocks of shy curlews, and specimens
of a hundred tribes to which my limited ornithological knowledge cannot furnish
a name. The solan goose yonder falls from heaven into the water like a
meteor-stone. See the solitary scart, with long narrow wing and outstretched
neck, shooting towards some distant promontory. Anon, high above head, come
wheeling a covey of lovely sea-swallows. You fire, one flutters down, never
more to skim the horizon or to dip in the sea-sparkle. Lift it up; is it not
beautiful? The wild, keen eye is closed, but you see the delicate slate-colour
of the wings, and the long tail-feathers white as the creaming foam. There is a
stain of blood on the breast, hardly brighter than the scarlet of its beak and
feet. Lay it down, for its companions are dashing round and round, uttering
harsh cries of rage and sorrow; and had you the heart, you could shoot them one
by one.

At ebb of tide wild-looking children, from turf cabins on the
hill-side, come down to hunt shell-fish. Even now a troop is busy; how their
shrill voices go the while! Old Effie I see is out to-day, quite a picturesque
object, with her white cap and red shawl. With a tin can in one hand, an old
reaping-hook in the other, she goes poking among the tangle. Let us see what
sport she has had. She turns round at our salutation - very old, old almost as
the worn rocks around. She might have been the wife of Wordsworth's
"Leechgatherer." Her can is sprawling with brown crabs; and, opening her apron,
she exhibits a large black and blue lobster - a fellow such as she alone can
capture. A queer woman is Effie, and an awesome. She is familiar with ghosts
and apparitions. She can relate legends that have power over the superstitious
blood, and with little coaxing will sing those wild
Gaelic songs of hers - of
dead lights on the sea, of fishing-boats going down in squalls, of unburied
bodies tossing day and night upon the gray peaks of the waves, and of girls
that pray God to lay them by the sides of their drowned lovers, although for
them should never rise mass nor chant, and although their flesh should be torn
asunder by the wild fishes of the sea.

Rain is my enemy here; and at this writing I am suffering siege.
For three days this rickety dwelling has stood assault of wind and rain.
Yesterday a blast breached the door, and the tenement fluttered for a moment
like an umbrella caught in a gust. All seemed lost; but the door was got closed
again, heavily barred across, and the enemy foiled. An entrance, however, had
been effected, and that portion of the attacking column which I had imprisoned
by my dexterous manoeuvre, maddened itself into whirlwind, rushed up the
chimney, scattering my turf-fire as it went, and so escaped. Since that time
the windy columns have retired to the gorges of the hills, where I can hear
them howl at intervals; and the only thing I am exposed to is the musketry of
the rain. How viciously the small shot peppers the walls! Here must I wait till
the cloudy armament breaks up.

One's own mind is a dull companion in such circumstances. A
Sheridan himself - wont with his wit to brighten the feast, whose mind is a
phosphorescent sea, dark in its rest, but when touched giving out a flash of
splendour for response - if cooped up here would be dull as a Lincolnshire fen
at midnight, unenlivened by a single Jack-o'-Lantern. Books are the only refuge
on a rainy day; but in Skye bothies
books are rare. To me, however, the gods have proved kind - for in my sore need
I found on a shelf here two volumes of the old Monthly Review, and I have
sauntered through those dingy literary catacombs with considerable
satisfaction. What a strange set of old fogies the writers are! To read them is
like conversing with the antediluvians. Their opinions have fallen into disuse
long ago, and resemble to-day the rusty armour and gimcracks of an old
curiosity shop. Mr Henry Rogers has written a fine essay on the "Glory and
Vanity of Literature" - in my own thoughts, out of this dingy material before
me I can frame a finer. These essays and criticisms were thought brilliant, I
suppose, when they appeared last century; and authors praised therein doubtless
considered themselves rather handsome flies preserved in pure critical amber
for the inspection and admiration of posterity. The volumes were published, I
notice, from 1790 to 1792, and exhibit a period of wonderful literary activity.
Not to speak of novels, histories, travels, farces, tragedies, upwards of two
hundred poems, short and long, are brought to judgment; and several of these -
with their names and the names of their authors I have, during the last two
days, made acquaintance for the first time - are assured of immortality.
Perhaps they deserved it; but they have gone down like the steamship President
and left no trace.

On the whole, these Monthly Reviewers worked hard, and with proper
spirit and deftness. They had a proud sense of the importance of their craft,
they laid down the law with great gravity, and from critical benches shook
their awful wigs on offenders. How it all looks now! "Let us indulge ourselves
with another extract," quoth one, "and contemplate once more the tear of grief
before we are called upon to witness the tear of rapture." Both tears dried up
long ago - like those that may have sparkled on a Pharaoh's cheek. Hear this
other, stern as Rhadamanthus. Behold Duty steeling itself against human
weakness! "It grieves us to wound a young man's feelings: but our judgment must
not be biased by any plea whatsoever. Why will men apply for our opinion when
they know that we cannot be silent, and that we will not lie !" Listen to this
prophet in Israel, one who has not bent the knee to Baal, and say if there be
not a plaintive touch of pathos in him: "Fine words do not make fine poems.
Scarcely a month passes in which we are not obliged to issue this decree. But
in these days of universal heresy our decrees are no more respected than the
bulls of the Bishop of Rome." Oh that men would hear, that they would incline
their hearts to wisdom!

One peculiarity I have noticed - the advertisement sheets which
accompanied the numbers are bound up with them, and form an integral portion of
the volumes. And just as the tobacco-less man whom we met at the entrance to
Glen Sligachan smoked the paper
in which his roll of pigtail had been wrapped, so when I had finished the
criticisms I attacked the advertisements, and found them much the more amusing
reading. Might not the magazine-buyer of to-day follow the example of the
unknown Islesman? Depend upon it, to the reader of the next century the
advertising sheets will be more interesting than the poetry, or the essays, or
the stories. The two volumes were a godsend; but at last I began to weary of
the old literary churchyard in which the poet and his critic sleep in the same
oblivion. When I closed the books, and placed them on their shelves, the rain
peppered the walls as pertinaciously as when I took them down.

Next day it rained still. It was impossible to go out; the volumes
of the Monthly Review were sucked oranges, and could yield no further amusement
or interest. What was to be done? I took refuge with the Muse. Certain notions
had got into my brain, - certain stories had taken possession of my memory, -
and these I resolved to versify and finally to dispose of. Here are "Poems
Written in a Skye Bothy." The
competent critic will see at a glance that they are the vilest plagiarisms, -
that as throughout I have called the sky "blue" and the grass "green," I have
stolen from every English poet from Chaucer downwards; he will observe also,
from occasional uses of "all" and "and," that they are the merest Tennysonian
echoes. But they served their purpose, - they killed for me the languor of the
rainy days, which is more than they are likely to do for the critic. Here they
are: -

THE WELL

The well gleams by a mountain
roadWhere travellers never come and goFrom city proud, or poor
abodeThat frets the dusky plain below.All silent as the mouldering
lute That in a ruin long hath lain;All empty as a dead man's brain -
The path untrod by human foot,That, thread-like, far away doth
runTo savage peaks, whose central spireBids farewell to the setting
sun,Good-morrow to the morning's fire.

The country stretches out beneathIn
gloom of wood and gray of heath;The carriers' carts with mighty
loadsBlack dot the long white country roads;The stationary stain of
smokeIs crown'd by spire and castle rock;A silent line of vapouly
white,The train creeps on from shade to light;The river journeys to the
mainThroughout a vast and endiless plain,Far-shadow'd by the Iabouring
breastOf thunder leaning o'er the west.

A rough uneven waste of gray,The
landscape stretches day by day;But strange the sight when evening
sailsAthwart the mountains and the vales;Furnace and forge, by daylight
tame,Uplift their restless towers of flame,And cast a broad and angry
glow Upon the rain-cloud hanging low;As dark and darker grows the
hour,More wild their colour, vast their power,Till by the glare in
shepherd's shed,The mother sings her babe a-bed:From town to town the
pedlar wadesThrough far-flung crimson lights and shades.

As softly fall the autumn nightsThe
city blossoms into lights;Now here, now there, a sudden sparkSputters
the twilight's light-in-dark;Afar a glimmering crescent shakes;The
gloom across the valley breaksIn glow-worms; swiftly, strangely fair,A
bridge of lamps leaps through the air,And hangs in night; and sudden
shinesThe long street's splendour-fretted lines.Intense and bright that
fiery bloomUpon the bosom of the gloom;At length the starry clusters
fail,Afar the lustrous crescents pale,Till all the wondrous pageant
diesIn gray light of damp-dawning skies.

High stands that lonely mountain
groundAbove each babbling human sound;Yet from its place afar it
seesNight scared by angry furnaces;The lighting up of city
proud,The brightness o'er it in the cloud.The foolish people never
seekWise counsel from that silent peak,Though from its height it looks
abroadAll-seeing as the eye of God,Haunting the peasant on the
down,The workman in the busy town;Though from the closely-curtain'd
dawnThe day is by the mountain drawn - Whether the slant lines of the
rainFill high the brook and shake the pane;Or noonday reapers, wearied,
haltOn sheaves beneath a blinding vault,Unshaded by a vapour's fold -
Though from that mountain summit oldThe cloudy thunder breaks and
rolls,Through deep reverberating souls;Though from it cornea the angry
light,Whose forky shiver scars the sight,And rends the shrine from
floor to dome,And leaves the gods without a home.

And ever In that under-world,Round
which the weary clouds are furl'dThe cry of one that buys and sells,The
laughter of the bridal bellsClear-breaking from cathedral towers;The
pedlar whistling o'er the moors;The sun-burnt reapers, merry corps,With
stooks behind and grain before;The huntsman cheering on his
hounds,Build up one sound of many sounds.As instruments of diverse
tone,The organ's temple-shaking groan,Proud trumpet, cymbal's piercing
cry,Build one consummate harmony:As smoke that drowns the city's
spires,Is fed by twice a million fires;As midnight draws her complex
grief From sob and wail of bough and leaf:And on those favourable
daysWhen earth is free from mist and haze,And heaven is silent as an
earDown-leaning, loving words to hear,Stray echoes of the world are
blownaround those pinnacles of stone - The saddest sound beneatri rae
sun, Earth's thousand voices blent in one.

And purely gleams the crystal
wellAmid the silence terrible;On heaven its eye is ever wide,At
morning and at eventide;And as a lover in the sightAnd favour of his
maiden bright,Bends till his face he proudly spiesIn the clear depths
of upturn'd eyes - The mighty heaven above it bow'd,Looks down and sees
its crumbling cloud;Its round of summer blue immense,Drawn in a yard's
circumference,And lingers o'er the image there,Than its once self more
purely fair.

Whence come the waters, garner'd
upSo purely in that rocky cup?They come from regions high and
far,Where blows the wind, and shines the star.The silent dews that
Heaven distilsAt midnight on the lonely hills;The shower that plain and
mountain dims,On which the dazzling rainbow swims:The torrents from the
thunder gloom,Let loose as by the crack of doom,The whirling waterspout
that cracksInto a scourge of cataracts,Are swallow'd by the thirsty
ground,And day and night without a sound,Through banks of marl, and
belts of ores,They filter through a million pores,Losing each foul and
turbid stain:So fed by many a trickling vein,The well, through silent
days and years,Fills softly, like an eye with tears.

AUTUMN

Happy Tourist, freed from
London,The planets' murmur in the Times !Seated here with task work
undone,I must list the city chimesA fortnight longer. As I gazeOn
Pentland's back, where noon-day piles hisMists and vapours: old St
Giles'sCoronet in sultry haze:A hoary ridge of ancient
townSmoke-wreathed, picturesque, and still; Cirque of crag and templed
hill,And Arthur's lion couching downIn watch, as If the news of
FloddenStirr'd him yet - my fancy fliesTo level wastes and moors
untroddenPurpling 'neath the low-hung skies.I see the burden'd
orchards, mute and mellow:I see the sheaves; while, girt by reaper
trains,And blurr'd by breaths of horses, through a yellowSeptember
moonlight, roll the swaggering wanes.

While in this delicious weatherThe
apple ripens row on row,I see the footsteps of the heatherPurpling
ledges: to and froIn the wind the restless swallowsTurn and twitter; on
the cragThe ash, with all her scarlet berries,Dances o'er a burn that
hurriesFoainily from jag to jag:Now it babbles over shallowsWhere
great scales of sunlight flickerNarrow'd 'gainst the bank it
quickerRuns in many a rippled ridge;Anon in purple pools and
hollows.It slumbers: and beyond the bridge,On which a troop of savage
children clamber,A sudden ray comes outAnd scuds a startled
troutO'er golden stones, through chasms brilliant amber.To-day one half
remembersWith a sigh,In the yellow-moon'd SeptembersLong gone
by,Many a solitary strollWith an over-flowing soulWhen the
moonbeam, falling whiteOn the wheat fields, was delight;When the
whisper of the riverWas a thing to list for ever;When the call of
lonely birdDeeper than all music stirr'd;When the restless spirit
shookO'er some prophesying book,In whose pages dwelt the humOf a
life that was to come;When I, in a young man's fashion, Long'd for some
excess of passion - Melancholy, glory, pleasure,Heap'd up to a lover's
measure;For some unknown experienceTo unlock this mortal fence,And
let the coop'd-up spirit rangeA world of wonder, sweet and strangesAnd
thought, O joy all joys above! Experience would be faced like Love.When
I dream'd that youth would beBlossom'd like an apple-tree,The fancy in
extremest ageWould dwell within the spirit sage,Like the wall-flower on
the ruin,With Its smile at Time's undoing,Like the wall-flower on the
ruin,The brighter from the wreck it grew inAh, how dearly one
remembersMemory-embalm'd Septembers!But I start, as well I may,I
have wasted half a day.The west is red above the sun,And my task work
unbegun.

Nature will not hold a truceWith a
beauty without use:Spring, though blithe and debonair,Ripens plum and
ripens pear.

In the exuberance of hope and
life,When one is play'd on like an instrumentBy passion, and plain
faces are divine;When one holds tenure in the evening star,We love the
pensiveness of autumn air,The songless fields, brown stubbles, hectic
woods:For as a prince may in his splendour sigh,Because the splendours
are his common wear,Youth pines within the sameness of delight :And the
all-trying spirit, uncontentWith aught that can be fully known,
beguilesItself with melancholy images,Sits down at gloomy banquets,
broods o'er graves,Tries unknown sorrow's edge as curiously(And not
without a strange prophetic thrill)As one might try a sword's, and makes
itselfThe Epicunis of fantastic griefs

But when the blood chills and the years
go by,As we resemble autumn more, the moreWe love the resurrection time
of spring.And spring is now around me. Snowdrops came;Crocuses gleam'd
along the garden walkLike footlights on the stage. But these are
gone.And now before my door the poplar burns,A torch enkindled at an
emerald fire.The flowering currant is a rosy cloud;One daffodil is
hooded, one full blown:The sunny mavis from the tree top sings;Within
the flying sunlights twinkling troopsOf chaffinches jerk here and there;
beneathThe shrubbery the blackbird runs, then flits,With chattering
cry: demure at ploughman's heel,Within the reddrawn furrow, stalks the
rook,A pale metallic glister on his back;And, like a singing arrow
upwards shotFar out of sight, the lark is in the blue.

This morning, when the stormy front of
MarchIs mask'd with June, and has as sweet a breath,And sparrows fly
with straws, and in the elmsRooks flap and caw, then stream off to the
fields,And thence returning, flap and caw again,I gaze in idle
pleasantness of mood,Far down upon the harbour and the sea - The
smoking steamer half-way 'cross the FirthShrunk to a beetle's size, the
dark-brown sailsOf scatter'd fishing-boats, and still beyond,Seen dimly
through a veil of tender haze,The coast of
Fife endorsed with ancient towns, -
As quaint and strange to-day as when the queen,In whose smile lay the
headsman's glittering axe,Beheld them from her tower of Holyrood,And
sigh'd for fruitful France, and turning, cower'dFrom the lank shadow,
Darnley, at her side.

Behind, the wondrous city stretches
dimWith castle, spire, and column, from the lineOf wavy Pentland, to
the pillar'd rangeThat keeps in memory the men who fellIn the great war
that closed at Waterloo.Whitely the pillars gleam against the
hill,While the light flashes by. The wondrous town,That keeps not
summer, when the summer comes,Without her gates, but takes it to her
heart!The mighty shadow of the castle fallsAt noon athwart deep
gardens, roses blowAnd fade in hearing of the chariot-wheel.High-lifted
capital that look'st abroad,With the great lion couchant at thy
side,O'er fertile plains emboss'd with woods and towns;O'er silent
Leith's smoke-huddled spires and masts;O'er unllnk'd Forth, slow wandering
with her islesTo ocean's azure, spreading faint and wide, O'er which
the morning comes - if but thy spiresWere dipp'd in deeper sunshine,
tenderer shade,Through bluer heavens rolled a brighter sun,The
traveller would call thee peer of Rome,Or Florence, white-tower'd, on the
mountain side.

Burns trod thy pavements with his
ploughman's stoopAnd genius-flaming eyes. Scott dwelt in thee,The
homeliest-featured of the demigods;Apollo, with a deep Northuinbrian
burr,And Jeffrey with his sharp-cut critic face,And Lockhart with his
antique Roman taste,And Wilson. reckless of his splendid gifts,As
hill-side of its streams in thunder rain;And Chalmers, with those heavy
slumberous lids,Veiling a prophet's eyes; and Miller, too,Primeval
granite amongst smooth-rubb'd men;Of all the noble race but one
remains, Aytoun - with silver bugle at his side,That echo'd through the
gorges of romance - Pity that 'tis so seldom at his lip!

This place is fair; but when the year
hath grownFrom snow-drops to the dusk auricula,And spaces throng'd
to-day with naked boughs,Are banks of murmuring foliage,
chestnut-flower'd,Far fairer. Then, as in the summer past,From the red
village underneath the hill,When the long daylight closes, in the
hushComes the pathetic mirth of children's games:Or clear sweet
trebles, as two lines of girlsAdvance and then retire, singing the
whileSnatches of some old ballad sore decay'd,And crumbling to
no-meaning through sheer age - A childish drama watch'd by labouring
men,In shirt-sleeves, smoking at the open doors,With a strange
sweetness stirring at their hearts.Then when the darkness comes and voices
cease,The long-ranged brick-kilns glow, the far-stretch'd pie,Breaks
out, like Aaron's rod, in buds of fire;And with a startling suddenness the
light,That like a glow-worm slumbers on Inchkeith,Broadens, then to a
glow-worm shrinks again.The sea is dark, but on the darker coastBeyond,
the ancient towns Queen Mary knewGlitter, like swarms of fire-flies, here
and there.Come, Summer, from the south, and grow apaceFrom flower to
flower, until thy prime is reach'd,Then linger, linger, linger o'er the
rose!

DANSCIACIL

Upon a ruin by the desert shore, I
sat one autumn day of utter peace,Watching a lustrous stream of vapour pour
O'er Blaavin, fleece on fleece.

The blue frith stretch'd in front
without a sail, Huge boulders on the shore lay wreck'd and
strown;Behind arose, storm-bleach'd and lichen-pale, Buttress and wail
of stone.

And sitting on the Norseman's ruin'd
stair, While through the shining vapours downward roil'd,A ledge of
Blaavin gleam'd out, wet and hare, I heard this story told : -

"All night the witch sang, and the
castle grewUp from the reck, with tower and turret crown'd:All night
she sang - when fell the morning dew 'Twas finish'd round and round.

"The years built up a giant broad and
grave, With florid locks, and eyes that look'd men through;A passion
for the long lift of the wave From roaming sires he drew.

"Amongst the craggy islands did he
rove, And, like an eagle, took and rent his prey;Oft, deep with
battle-spoil, his galleys clove Homeward their joyous way.

"He towering, full-arm'd, in the van,
with spear Outstretch'd, and hair blown backward like a flame:While to
the setting sun his oarsmen rear The glory of his name.

"Once, when the sea his battle galleys
cross'd, His mother, sickening, turn'd from summer light,And faced
death as the Norse land, clench'd with frost, Faces the polar night.

"At length his masts came raking
through the mist:He pour'd upon the beach his wild-eyed bands:The
fierce, fond, dying woman turn'd and kiss'd His orphan-making hands,

"And lean'd her head against his mighty
breast In pure content, well knowing so to liveOne single hour was all
that death could wrest Away, or life could give;

"And murmur'd as her dying fingers took
Farewell of cheek and brow, then fondly drown'dThemselves in tawny hair
- ' I cannot brook To sleep here under ground.

"My women through my chambers weep and
wail:I would not waste one tear-drop though I could:When they brought
home that lordly length of mail With bold blood stain'd and glued,

"I wept out all my tears. Amongst my
kind I cannot sleep; so upon Marsco's head, Right in the pathway of the
Norway wind, See thou and make my bed!

"The north wind blowing on that lonely
place Will comfort me. Kiss me, my Torquil !Feel the big hot tears
plashing on my face. How easy 'tis to die!'

"The farewell-taking arms around him
set Clung closer; and a feeble mouth was raised,Seeking for his in
darkness - ere they met The eyeballs fix'd and glazed.

"Dearer that kiss, by pain and death
forestall'd, Than ever yet touch'd lip! Beside the bedThe Norseman
knelt till sunset, then he call'd The dressers of the dead,

"Who, looking on her face, were daunted
more Than when she, living, flash'd indignant fires;For in the
gathering gloom the features wore A look that was her sire's.

"And upward to a sea-o'erstaring
peakWith lamentation was the Princess borne, And, looking northward,
left with evening meek, And fiery-shooting morn."

In this wise ran the story full of
breaks:And brooding o'er that subtle sense of deathThat sighs through
all our happy days, that shake, All raptures of our breath,

Methought I saw the ancient woman
bow'dBy sorrow in her witch.built home - and still The radiant billows
of autumnal cloudFlow'd on the monstrous hill.

EDENBAIN

Young Edenbain canter'dAcross to
Kilmuir,The road was rough,But his horse was sure,The mighty sun
takingHis splendid sea-bath,Made golden the greennessOf valley and
strath.

He cared not for sunset,For gold
rock nor isie:O'er his dark face their flittedA secretive smile.His
cousin, the greatLondon merchant was dead,Edenbain was his heir -
"I'll buy lands," he said.

"Men fear death. How should I !We
live and we learn!' faith,death has done meThe handsomest
turn.Young, good-looking, thirty - (Hie on, Roger, hie!)I'll taste
every pleasureThat money can buy.

"Duntulm and DunsciachMay laugh at
my birth.Let them laugh! Father AdamWas made out of earth.What are
worm-eaten castlesAnd ancestry old,'Gainst a modern purse
stuff'dWith omnipotent gold?"

He saw himself ridingTo kirk and to
fair,Hats lifting, arms nudging, "That's Edenbain there!"He thought
of each girlHe had known in his life,Nor could fix on which
sweetnessTo pluck for a wife.

Home Edenbain canter'd,With pride
in his heart,When sudden he pull'd upHis horse with a start.The
road, which was bareAs the desert before,Was cover'd with peopleA
hundred and more.

'Twas a black creeping funeral;And
Edenbain drewIlls horse to the side of The roadway. He knewIn the
cart rolling pastThat a coffin was laid - But whose? the harsh
outlineWas hid by a plaid.

The cart pass'd. The mournersCame
marching behind:In front his own father, Greyheaded,
stone-blind;And far-removed cousins,His own stock and race,Came
after in silence,A cloud on each face.

Together walk'd MugstotAnd
fiery-soul'd Ord,Whom six days beforeHe had left at his
board.Behind came the red-beardedSons of TormoreWith whom he was
drunkScarce a fortnight before.

"Who is dead? Don't they know me
?"Thought young Edenbain,With a weird terror gatheringIn heart and
in brain.In a moment the blackCrawling funeral was gone, And he sat
on his horse On the roadway alone.

"'Tis the second sight," cried
he;"Tis strange that I missMyself 'mong the mourners!Whose burial
is this?"My God! 'tismyown!"And the blood left his heart, As he
thought of the dead manThat lay in the cart.

I had dream'd: but most of the river,
That, glittering mile on mile,Flow'd through my imagination,As
through Egypt flows the Nile.

Was it absolute truth, or a dreaming
That the wakeful day disowns,That I heard something more in the stream,
as it ran, Than water breaking on stones?

Now the hoofs of a flying mosstrooper,
Now a bloodhound's bay, half caught,The sudden blast of a hunting horn,
The burr of Walter Scott?

Who knows? But of this I am certain,
That but for the ballads and wailsThat make passionate dead things,
stocks and stones, Make piteous woods and dales.

The Tweed were as poor as the Amazon,
That, for all the years it has roll'd,Can tell but how fair was the
morning red,How sweet the evening gold.

JUBILATION OF
SERGEANT M'TURK ON WITNESSING THE HIGHLAND GAMES INVERNESS, 1864.

Hurrah for the Highland
glory!Hurrah for the Highland fame!For the battles of the great
Montrose,And the pass of the gallant Graeme !Hurrah for the knights and
noblesThat rose up in their place,And perill'd fame and fortuneFor
Charlie's bonny face!

An' when the weary time was
owre,When the head fell frae the neck,Wolfe heard the cry, "They run,
they run!"On the heights aboon Quebec.At Ticonderoga's fortressWe
fell on sword and targe:Hurt Moore was lifted up to see"His
Fortysecond" charge.

An' aye the pipe was loudest,An'
aye the tartans flew,The first frae bluidy MaidaTo bluidier
Waterloo.We have sail'd owre many a sea, my lads,We have fought 'neath
many a sky,And it's where the fight has hottest ragedThat the tartans
thickest lie.

We landed, lads, in India,When in
our bosom's coreOne bitter memory burn'd like hell - The shambles at
Cawnpore.Weel ye mind our march through the furnace-heath,Wed ye mind
the heaps of slain,As we follow'd through his score of fightsBrave
'Havèlock the Dane."

Hurrah for the Highland
glory!Hurrah for the Highland names!God bless you, noble
gentlemen!God love you, bonny dames!And sneer not at the brawny
limbs,And the strength of our Highland men - When the bayonets next are
levell'd,They may all be needed then.

These verses I had no sooner copied out in my best hand than,
looking up, I found that the rain had ceased from sheer fatigue, and that great
white vapours were rising up from the damp valleys. Here was release at last -
the beleaguering army had raised the siege; and, better than all, pleasant as
the sound of Blucher's cannon on the evening of Waterloo, I heard the sound of
wheels on the boggy ground: and just when the stanched rain-clouds were burning
into a sullen red at sunset, I had the M'Ians, father and son, in my bothy, and
pleasant human intercourse. They came to carry me off with them.

I am to stay with Mr M'Ian to-night. A wedding has taken place up
among the hills, and the whole party have been asked to make a night of it The
mighty kitchen has been cleared for the occasion; torches are stuck up, ready
to be lighted; and I already hear the first mutterings of the bagpipes' storm
of sound. The old gentleman wears a look of brightness and hilarity, and vows
that he will lead off the first reel with the bride. Everything is prepared;
and even now the bridal party are coming down the steep hill-road. I must go
out to meet them. To-morrow I return to my bothy to watch; for the
weather has become fine
now, the sunny mists congregating on the crests of Blaavin - Blaavin on which
the level heaven seems to lean.